Breastfeeding

Come my child and feed on these breasts

This time maybe my milk will come

I’ve removed the scabs, cleaned up the blood

The doctor says if you suckle enough

My body will answer your hunger

Come my child, help me be your mother

What kind of woman becomes a mother

Without milk? I never heard of barren breasts

When I bore my son. Cold and deaf to cries of hunger

This portends the kind of mother you will become

You married too late; basic education for women is enough

Your aged body is causing you pain and sores and blood

Exclusive breastfeeding. Breast milk is best. Sores and blood

Are known to happen in some mothers

Perhaps some hormones are too much and some not enough

If it isn’t done, cancers are known to start in breasts

You must cradle your child just so, to some, holding comes

Naturally. Tell no one you use formula to keep off the hunger

Pork trotters, frog legs, mouse soup to sate a new mother’s hunger

Dog thighs slow cooked into soup help to regain the blood

Lost in childbirth. Eat, don’t say you wont, if you want milk to come

You must think first for your child now you are a mother

Stop crying, your tears will draw away water from your breasts

Your body is now your child’s, for nine months you were indulged enough

My husband awake all night says enough

As if I intend otherwise, he instructs me to end our daughter’s hunger

As if only he cannot bear to hear our daughter cry at her mother’s breasts

I’m tired I say, can I rest a bit and try again, I’ve lost a lot of blood

But didn’t you say you always wanted to become a mother

How is it you cannot feed our child when your time has finally come?

I wish they wouldn’t just draw back the cloth when they come

I’m trying to breastfeed, isn’t the sight of a child’s covered form enough?

No, they must open and stare at the dry breasts of a failed mother

Men who have no breasts, gaze on as they opine on my child’s hunger

As if this is not my body dying in ache, nipples stinging with blood

I widen sleep-starved eyes soaked in shame, betrayed by these, my breasts

My daughter, I am your mother, I will appease your hunger

Who knows if milk will come but I have suffered enough

We just shared blood, let me not burden you with breast.